Retrieve It! 2.5 helps you swiftly find information on your hard drive and on the Internet.
Retrieve It! can find files by name (very quickly), and it can search the contents of files as well -- on any hard drive, zip disk, server, or other volume. Retrieve It! also works with your Web browser to let you search the World Wide Web, recent news, classified ads, and Usenet – and lookup stock quotes, email addresses, and other online information – faster than using your web browser directly.
Chapter 1: About This On-line Help
This On-line help is a subset of the printed Retrieve It! 2.5 User’s Guide. See the Retrieve It! User’s Guide for installation instructions and Limitations on Warranty and Liability.
If you opened this file using Retrieve It! 2.5 (choosing “Help…” from the Apple menu, at the top left of the menu bar) you’ll see a “Find” button above. To quickly find a topic, type a word (or partial word) related to the topic into the box next to “Find” above, and click on the Find button.
Chapter 2: A Few Quick Examples
This chapter illustrates how you can use Retrieve It! to find files whose names or contents contain any part of a word or phrase.
Example 1: Finding files whose names contain a given word
1. Start “Retrieve It! 2.5”, so its main window appears.
2. Type a word and click the Start button. When you start the search Retrieve It! will find and list each file on your hard drive whose name contains the word. Retrieve It! will bark when it's done. If no matching files were found, try searching for a different word.
When a search is in progress, the “Start” button changes to a “Pause” button. As the name implies, you can pause the search by clicking that button. A double border around a button (e.g. the Start button) means you can select it by typing the <return> or <enter> key on your keyboard, or by clicking on the button.
3. Select a file name from the list of found files. (You can do this even while the search proceeds.) When you select a file, Retrieve It! shows you information about the file, such as when it was created and last modified, and its size. You can use the Reveal command to have the Finder open the window containing the selected item, showing you where the file resides on your hard drive. You can view the contents of a selected file using the Peek or Open commands. And on system supporting drag-and-drop, you can drag found items to the Finder. These commands are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
Example 2: Finding files whose contents contain a given word
1. Click on the pop-up menu next to “in:” on the main Retrieve It! screen, and choose “content” from that menu. If a previous search was in progress, Retrieve It! will ask if it’s ok to stop that search and clear any information found during it. Respond by clicking the OK button.
2. Narrow the search to a specific folder by selecting “other folder…” from the “Search:” popup menu. This will bring up a dialog similar to the kind you use in most Macintosh applications when saving documents. You can use it to choose a folder – for example, the folder containing your saved email messages. Note, you can also bring up this dialog by typing command-L – that is, by holding the command key down (the one next to the space bar with the Apple logo on it) and typing L.
When searching file contents, you should always try to narrow the search to a specific folder, because this will be much faster than searching an entire hard drive. You can also restrict the search to files of a certain kind (e.g. Microsoft Word files) or files that were recently modified. You do this with the options in the pop-up menus next to “of:” and “modified:” on Retrieve It!’s main screen. These options are described more in Chapter 3.
3. Type a word or phrase and click the Start button. Retrieve It! will search the content of each file in the folder you chose in step 2 (shown next to "Search:" at the top of the screen), and Retrieve It! will list each file that contains the text you typed.
Example 3: Searching for combinations of words
1. Pause any current search in progress, and type two words separated by the word AND. For example, you could type: Jack AND Jill.
2. Start the search. (If Retrieve It! asks whether it’s ok to clear the current search, click OK.) Retrieve It! will list all files containing both the word "Jack" and the word "Jill". To find files containing the phrase "Jack and Jill", as opposed to the two separate words "Jill" and "Jack", you must surround the phrase with quotation marks. That is, type: "Jack and Jill".
The word AND in step 1 above is called a search operator. (It’s shown in capital letters here, but the case doesn’t matter.) Retrieve It! has many other search operators. Operators are described in Chapter 6.
Example 4: Searching the Internet
1. Click on the “Internet” item in the “Search:” popup menu and keep holding the mouse down. You’ll see a submenu appear with items like “World Wide Web”, “News”, “Stocks”, and more. While still holding the mouse down, move it over the “World Wide Web” item. Another submenu will appear listing specific Internet services for searching the World Wide Web – including Alta Vista, Excite, InfoSeek, and others. Move the mouse over InfoSeek and let go.
2. Retrieve It! displays a message that indicates what this search service can find and gives and example. Type some text, like that shown in the example.
3. Hit the start button. Retrieve It! will launch your Web browser (if it’s not already open) and tell it to show the results of your search. Chapter 8 describes Retrieve It!’s Internet features in detail.
Chapter 3: Using Retrieve It! to Find Files
This Chapter explains how to use Retrieve It! 2.5 and all of its search options to quickly find information anywhere on your Macintosh.
When you start Retrieve It! the main screen appears. Each box with a little black triangle is a pop-up menu. When you click and hold the mouse button on a pop-up menu, options appear, allowing you to select one.
Choosing where to search
Use the pop-up menu next to the word “Search:” to tell Retrieve It! what volume or folder you want to search. Hard disks, floppies, file servers, and CDs are examples of volumes.
If you have more than one volume, you can choose “all volumes” to search all of them. If you have server volumes mounted, you can choose “all local volumes” to search just local drives (not the servers).
When searching file names, it may be fastest to search a full hard drive. But when searching the content of files, you’ll usually want to speed up the search by narrowing it to a specific folder rather than searching an entire hard drive. You can do this by choosing “other folder…” from the “Search:” pop-up menu. This will bring up a window similar to the kind used in most Macintosh applications to save documents. You can use it to choose a folder – for example, the folder containing your saved email messages. You can also bring up this window by typing command-L – that is, by holding the command key down (the one next to the space bar with the Apple logo on it) and typing L. The names of the last dozen or so folders searched will be remembered in the “Search:” pop-up menu, so you can quickly choose to re-search one of those folders later.
Entering what to search for
In the box next to “for:” type the word, phrase, part of a word, or combination of words you want Retrieve It! to find. When you start the search, Retrieve It! will list all files containing the text you typed. You can use search operators to find combinations of words, like: Apple and Orange but not Banana. Chapter 6 discusses search operators.
Searching in file names or content
Retrieve It! lets you search for words in the names or in the content of files. Use the pop-up menu next to “in:” on Retrieve It!’s main screen to select which part of files to search: name, content, or resources. Choose “content” to search inside of word processor, email, and most other text-containing files. (“Resources” are extra information stored with some files. Most users have no need to search resources.) Typing command-I will toggle between “names” and “content”.
Since most documents that contain text are smaller than 2 MB, searching larger files might slow the search unnecessarily. So when searching the content of files, if you know that the files you’re seeking are smaller than 2 MB, it is a good idea to choose “Ignore files larger than 2 MB” from Retrieve It!’s Preferences menu. This is the default.
You can also use Retrieve It!’s Preferences menu to ignore aliases when searching the content of files. If aliases are NOT ignored, then when Retrieve It! sees an alias it will resolve it and search the content of the original file referred to by the alias. This slows the search a bit, but it can be a useful feature. For example, once you have found some files with Retrieve It!, you can save aliases referring to them in a folder by using the “Save Aliases to…” command in Retrieve It!’s Find menu. Later, if “Search originals of file aliases” is selected in the Preference menu, you could search that folder again: Each alias in the folder would get resolved and Retrieve It! would re-search the content of those previously found items.
Searching scanned files after using OCR software
If you’ve scanned files with a scanner, then converted the files with optical character recognition (OCR) software, Retrieve It! can then find words inside the converted files. Retrieve It! can find words in scanned files only after the OCR process because the files contain only images until the OCR software converts them to text or word processor files.
Choosing the kind of files to search
Use the “of:” pop-up menu to limit Retrieve It!’s search to one kind of file. The default selection is “all files and folders”. But you can speed your search by limiting it to files created by a specific application. Choose “other...” to see a list of all the application files known to your system. It typically takes 10 to 30 seconds to build the list, depending on how many applications and drives you have. After you choose an application name from the list, the pop-up menu will remember it, so you won’t have to choose “other...” the next time you want to search for that kind of file.
If there's an application on your hard drive that isn’t listed when you choose “other…” from the “of:” pop-up menu, you might want to “rebuild the desktop” on your Macintosh the next time you turn it on. Apple recommends that Macintosh users do this once a month to help your Macintosh keep track of data. You can rebuild your desktop by holding down the Option and Command keys while starting up your computer. (The Command key is the one with the Apple logo next to the space bar.) Keep holding down the keys until you see a message asking whether you want to rebuild the desktop, then click OK.
Choosing the age of files to search
Use the pop-up menu next to “modified:” to indicate the age of items you would like Retrieve It! to search. For example, you might want to limit the search to files modified in the last week. This would be faster than searching all files.
Choosing “Case must match” or “Ignore case”
Retrieve It! lets you decide if case is significant during the search. For example, if “Case must match” is selected, a search for "Mookie" would not match "mookie" because the upper case "M" does not match the lower case "m". The two words do match when “Ignore case” is selected.
Starting and stopping the search
Click the “Start” button to start the search. Note: The double border around the Start button, or any button on the Macintosh, indicates that you can also select that button by typing the <return> or <enter> key on the keyboard.
When a search is in progress, the button name will change to “Pause”. Select the Pause button to pause the search. The button will change back to “Start”, and you can resume the search by selecting it again. Retrieve It! lists the found files.
Listing found files
To change the order in which found files are listed, click on the “Name”, “Kind”, or “Last Modified” column headings. Selecting “Name” will sort files alphabetically by name. Clicking on “Kind” will sort the files by kind. Clicking on “Last Modified” will sort the files by the date they were last modified. You can also use the “by Name”, “by Kind”, “by Date”, and “by Order Found” commands in the View menu to change the list order.
Seeing file information
When you click on a file in the list of found files, Retrieve It! displays information about it, including the file’s creation date, last modification date, size, and the folders in which the file resides. You can see information about the next or previous file in the list by typing the down or up arrow key on the keyboard.
Chapter 4: Peeking, Opening, Revealing, Moving, Copying, and Saving
Peeking in found files and folders
To view the content of a found file select its name from the list of found files and click on the Peek button. You can also choose the Peek command from the File menu or type Command-P. (The Command key is the one with the Apple logo next to the space bar.) A new “Peek window” will open.
Use the Peek window to view the text inside a file, scroll through it, find words in it, and select and copy portions of it (using the Copy command in the Edit menu). You can paste copied text into your word processor documents. The “Peek In Any File…” command in the File menu allows you to view any file, whether or not the file has been found by a Retrieve It! search. Chapter 5 explains the Peek window further.
Opening found files and folders
The view of a file in the Peek window may not look exactly as it does when opened in the application that created it. For example, graphics and formatting characters are not shown in the Peek window. To open a file with the application that created it – the usual way files are opened on the Macintosh – select the file’s name from the list of found files and select the “Open” button. (Or you can choose the Open command from the File menu or type Command-O.)
For example, if a MacWrite document is found and you have the MacWrite application, selecting “Open” will start the MacWrite application and tell it to open the found document. (The Open button will work only if the application that created the selected file is on your system.)
You can also open folders, aliases and applications with the Open command.
Double-clicking on a file name listed on Retrieve It!’s main screen is equivalent to selecting the file and choosing the Peek button. Choose the “Double-Click = Open” item in Retrieve It!’s Preferences menu to have double-clicks simulate the Open button instead of the Peek button.
Revealing found files and folders
To see where a found file or folder resides, select the item and choose the “Reveal” button. (You can also choose the Reveal command from the File menu or type Command-R.) This will tell the Macintosh Finder to open the folder containing the selected item and show you the item’s icon. This is very useful because once you have access to an item in the Finder, you can do anything with it – rename, copy, print, etc.
Moving and Copying with drag-and-drop
On systems that support drag-and-drop (like System 7.5 and later), you can drag found items to the Finder. If you hold the option key down while dragging-and-dropping, the selected items will be copied, instead of moved.
Moving found files or folders
To move a found file or folder to the Finder’s Desktop, select the item on Retrieve It!’s main screen and choose the “Move to Desktop” command from the File menu, or type Command-M. The item’s icons will appear on the desktop, usually on the right side of your screen.
To move a found file or folder to the Trash, select the item on Retrieve It!’s main screen and choose “Move to Trash” from the File menu.
Once an item has been moved to the Desktop or Trash, you can move it back to its original location by selecting its icon on the Desktop or in the Trash folder (which can be opened by double-clicking the Trash icon in the Finder) then choosing the “Put Away” command in the Finder’s File menu, or typing Command-Y.
Saving aliases of found files and folders
You can save the results of a search by selecting found items and choosing “Save Aliases to…” from the File menu, or typing Command-S. A dialog will appear letting you choose (or create) a folder into which the aliases will be saved. (A quick way to select all the found items is to click on one of them and then choose “Select All” from the Edit menu or type Command-A.)
Each alias is given the same name and modification date as the original item. If you print the folder of aliases using the Finder’s Print command, you’ll have a record of the found items. You can return to the folder of aliases later and open any of the found items by clicking on its alias. You can also re-search the folder of aliases to look for other words in the found files – as long as “Search original of aliases” is chosen in Retrieve It!’s Preferences menu.
Chapter 5: The Peek Window
You can view the content of a found file by selecting its name from the list of found files and clicking the Peek button. (You can also choose the Peek command from Retrieve It!’s File menu or type Command-P, where “Command” is the key with the Apple logo next to the space bar.) This brings up the Peek Window, which displays the file’s content.
To view a file that isn’t listed on Retrieve It!’s main screen, use the “Peek In Any File…” command in the File menu. (You can also peek in a file by dragging the file’s icon to Retrieve It!’s application icon in the Finder.)
The Peek window will not allow you to change the file, but you can scroll through the file, select and copy text just as you do in any Macintosh word processor. To select a portion of text, hold the mouse button down and drag the cursor over the text. Then use the Copy command under the Edit menu to copy the selected text. You can paste the copied text into documents in other programs.
The Peek window and Find commands make it easy to quickly find text in the file being viewed or in other files listed on the main Retrieve It! screen. These commands are discussed below. First we describe the Content, Resources, and “Try to hide funny characters” options on the Peek window.
Viewing Content or Resources
The two circles labeled “Content” and “Resources” at the top of the Peek Window are called radio buttons. (Only one can be selected at a time, like the buttons on a car radio.) Once selected, the circle fills in.
If the Content radio button is selected, the Peek Window displays a part of the file where most word processor and email documents store their information. If the Resources radio button is selected then the Peek Window displays another part the file where some applications store extra information. If the viewed file doesn’t have Content or Resources, the corresponding radio button will be disabled.
Hiding funny characters (or "Why does my file look weird?")
Retrieve It!’s Peek window doesn’t show formatting characters or graphics like a word processor or graphics program would. The Peek window displays everything as text. Formatting characters, graphics, and other non-text characters will look funny: that is, they will probably look like random characters.
To let Retrieve It! try to hide these funny looking characters, click on the box labeled “Try to hide funny characters” at the top of the Peek window. (The file itself is not affected, it will just be displayed differently.) When the box is selected, it will be filled in with an X. To re-show the funny characters, click on the box again.
Retrieve It! might not hide all the funny characters, because it doesn’t know exactly which characters the application that created the file meant to display as text. If you have the application, you can view the file as it was created using the Open command described in Chapter 4 above.
Finding text in the file
To find text in the file, type the text into the box at the top of the Peek window and click the Find button. Retrieve It! will search from the current selection point to the end of the file for the next occurrences of the text. If the text is found, Retrieve It! will scroll the text and highlight it as though you had selected it. Click the Find button again to search for the next occurrence of the text. If no more occurrences are found before the end of the file, Retrieve It! will beep. Click the Find button again to continue searching from the beginning of the file.
You can also invoke the Find command by selecting “Find” from Retrieve It!’s Find menu or by typing Command-F on the keyboard. (The Command key is the one with the Apple logo next to the space bar.) Learning the keyboard equivalents for the various Find commands shown in the Find menu makes it easier to quickly find what you want.
You can type several words or phrases separated by the word OR, or by commas into the Find box at the top of the Peek Window, as in: apple or orange or “to be or not to be”.
When you execute the Find command, Retrieve It! will scroll to the first occurrence of any of the words or phrases in the find box. The above example would find the next occurrence of the word "apple" or the word "orange" or the phrase "to be or not to be".
Finding text in the next or previous file
Suppose a Retrieve It! search for the phrase "to be or not to be" turned up five files. These would be listed on Retrieve It!’s main screen. You could view the content of one of the files by selecting it and choosing the Peek command (or typing Command-P, where the Command key is the one with the Apple logo next to the space bar). You could then repeatedly use the Find command (typing Command-F) to find each occurrence of the phrase "to be or not to be" within the selected file. But suppose this file doesn’t contain the particular occurrence of "to be or not to be" you were looking for. You could close the Peek Window, go back to the main Retrieve It! screen, select the next listed file (remember, there were five) and choose the Peek command again to open the next file. Retrieve It! provides a short cut for this.
Instead of closing the current Peek Window, you could use the “Find in Next File” command from the Find menu (or type Command-N) to find where "to be or not to be" occurs in the next file listed on Retrieve It!’s main screen. You can then use the Find command to find all occurrences of the phrase within the new file. If this file turns out not to have what you’re looking for, you can use the “Find in Next File” command again to look in the third file, and so on.
The “Find in Previous File” command (Command-B) is just like the “Find in Next File” command, except it brings up the previous file in Retrieve It!’s list of found files, rather than the next file.
Finding Selected Text
If you select a bit of text in the viewed file and then choose the “Find Selection” command (Command-H) from Find menu, the text will be copied to the Find box at the top of the Peek Window and the next occurrence of that text in the file will be found. You can then use the Find commands described above to find more occurrences of the selected text.
Chapter 6: Using Search Operators to Find Combinations of Words
You can find files containing specific combinations of words using Retrieve It!'s search operators. For example, to find files containing both the word "apple" and the word "orange", use the search operator AND by typing the following into the “for:” box on Retrieve It!’s main screen: apple and orange
(Note: The case of search operators is ignored. You can type "AND" or "and".)
Retrieve It! has many other search operators, like OR (for finding files containing either one word or another) and MORETHAN (for finding files containing more than a certain number of occurrences of a word). The available operators are: AND, BUT, OR, NOT, AFTER, BEFORE, WITHIN, NEAR, WITHINBEFORE, WITHINAFTER, and MORETHAN.
Seeing a List of Search Operators and Examples of How to Use Them
A list of search operators appears to the right of the search string box (the box next to “for:” on Retrieve It!’s main screen). If the list of search operators is not already visible, choose “Show operator list” from the Preferences menu to make it visible. (You can then hide it by choosing “Hide operator list” from the Preferences menu.)
To see an example of how to use a given search operator, click on its name in the list. If you double click on an operator name, that name will be typed into the search string box at the current selection point.
Using Parenthesis and Quotation Marks
If you type a search string containing more than one search operator, Retrieve It! will insert quotation marks and parenthesis where it thinks they should be. For example, if you type:
crown or Jack and Jill
and then start the search, Retrieve It! will rewrite the search string as:
(“CROWN” OR “JACK”) AND “JILL”
This would find files containing either "Crown" or "Jack", and containing "Jill".
You can put your own parenthesis in if you want the terms grouped differently. For example, you might retype the above search string as:
“CROWN” OR (“JACK” AND “JILL”)
This would find all files containing "crown", or containing both "Jack" and "Jill".
Similarly, you can put in your own quotation marks. For example, if you want files containing the phrase "Jack and Jill", as opposed to merely the word "Jack" and the word "Jill", you could retype the above search string as:
“CROWN” OR “JACK AND JILL”
Chapter 7: Searching Faster
Searching file names faster
Retrieve It! searches entire hard drives very quickly for all files containing a given word, phrase, or part of a word in their names. In fact, when searching file names it is usually faster to search a full hard drive than it is to search just one folder on the hard drive. It is also faster, when searching file names, to search for a single word, partial word, or phrase than it is to search for combinations of text using Retrieve It!’s search operators (for example, "Apple AND Orange”, as described in Chapter 6 above). Note, this is only the case when searching file names, not file content. When searching the contents of files, using search operators does not significantly slow the search.
Searching file content faster
Chapter 2 gives examples of how to search the content of files, as well as their names. There are several things you can do to limit the search and make it faster.
First, narrow the search to a specific folder, using the “other folder…” command in the pop-up menu next to “Search:” on Retrieve It!’s main screen (or type Command-L, where the Command key is the one with the Apple logo next to the space bar). For example, if you know that the file you seek is in a folder called “My 1994 letters”, you can save time by searching only that folder, instead of the entire hard drive. (That folder’s subfolders will also be searched.)
Next, if you know the file you seek has been modified in the last week, select “in the last week” from the pop-up menu next to “modified:” on Retrieve It!’s main window. If you know it has been modified in the last month, choose that option. The more specific you are, the fewer files Retrieve It! needs to search, so you’ll get search results faster.
You can also speed a search by narrowing it to a specific kind of file (for example, MacWrite files) using the “other…” command in the pop-up menu next to “of:” on Retrieve It!’s main window. You will want to do this only if the file you seek was created by the chosen application (for example, MacWrite).
Searching servers, floppies, and CD ROMs, is usually slower than searching hard drives, simply because it takes longer to read information from servers, floppies, and CD ROMs. Again, the more you can narrow the search, as described above, the faster it will be.
Chapter 8: Using Retrieve It! to Find Information on the Internet
Choosing your preferred Web browser:
Retrieve It! works with your Web browser to search and navigate the Internet – faster than using your browser directly. You can use the “Web Browser…” command in the Preferences menu to specify which browser application to use. Most users won’t need to set this explicitly, because Retrieve It! can usually find your browser on its own -- for example, if you use Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer, or if you use Internet Config software. If you use a different browser, or if you just want to be sure Retrieve It! knows which browser to use, you should set this Preference.
Choosing your preferred Email application:
Below you’ll see how to create Email messages from Retrieve It!. By default, Retrieve It! will use your web browser to create the new messages. But you can use the “Email Application…” Preference menu item to specify an Email application instead. Retrieve It! communicates with Web browsers and Email applications using a messaging standard (the ‘GURL’ AppleEvent). Email applications like Claris Emailer and Eudora Pro 3.0, and all major Web Browsers, support this standard. But not all Email applications do. If you choose your Email application, and find that you can’t create an Email application from Retrieve It!, choose the “Email Application” Preference item again and specify your Web browser instead of your Email application.
Searching the Internet – Web, News, Stocks, Email addresses, etc.:
To search the Internet with Retrieve It!, you simply select a search service from the Internet submenu of the “Search:” popup menu (like AltaVista from the World Wide Web submenu, or PCQuote from the Stocks submenu), type the words or phrases you’re looking for, and hit the Start button. Retrieve It! will open your Web browser, if it’s not already open, and tell it to display the results.
When you select a search service, Retrieve It! will show a message that describes what that service can search for and gives an example.
Note: Most Web browsers and Internet connection software will automatically connect to the Internet when Retrieve It! opens the browser – even dialing the phone if you’re using a dialup connection and you aren’t already connected. However, if you’re using America Online’s Browser, you may need to establish your America Online connection first.
Opening Web pages and Email messages:
Chapters 4 and 5 describe peeking inside files found on your hard drive, using Retrieve It!’s Peek window. If you see a URL like:
http://www.mvpsolutions.com/
while viewing a found file in a Peek window, you can quickly have your Web browser go to that Web page by option-clicking on the URL – that is, clicking on it while holding down the option key. Command-clicking also works – that is, clicking while holding down the Command key (the one with the Apple logo on it, next to the space bar).
Similarly, if you option-click or command-click on an email address, Retrieve It! will tell your preferred Email application (or web browser) to create a new Email message to that address. See the section at the beginning of Chapter 8 for how to specify a preferred Email application.
You can also open a web page or create a new Email message by typing a URL or Email address into Retrieve It!’s main window (in the “for:” field) and option-clicking on it, or command-clicking on it, or selecting the “Web Page…” command from the “View” menu (Command-U).
Surfing the web anonymously:
When you search the World Wide Web, the sites you visit can collect certain information about you – like your Internet Service Provider account ID (not your password) and what kind of computer you’re using.
Retrieve It! allows you to use a free online service called Anonymizer - created and run by Community ConneXion Inc. – which prevents sites you visit from collecting this information. To use this service, select “Surf the web anonymously” from Retrieve It!’s Preferences menu. You can learn more about the service by visiting:
http://www.Anonymizer.com/
Questions or Comments About Retrieve It!?
You can get the latest news about Retrieve It!, and find answers to frequently asked questions, by visiting MVP Solutions’ Web site at:
http://www.mvpsolutions.com/
An easy way to visit this web page is to open Retrieve It!’s About box (by selecting “About Retrieve It!…” from the Apple menu at the top left of Retrieve It!’s menu bar) and selecting the “MVP Solutions…” button.
